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The latest release of Creator, which is Sun's answer to rapid application development for the Web, has just been released. If you don't know, Creator's primary focus is creating apps using JSF—Java Server Faces[1]. Creator contains a neat data-binding model that allows you to bind JSF components to just about any data source. Based on NetBeans, Creator contains many easy to use and quality team tools, inspectors, and editors. You can find from information about the release here: (Web site)

I tried out the first release (I believe it was a pre-release) and wasn't enticed enough to devote time into figuring out how it worked. Actually, I tried to import some existing JSP projects, which it turns out wasn't the best approach. Firstly, the designer wasn't too kind to my CSS and secondly even though JSF is based on JSP, it's a completely different way of programming an app. I was thoroughly lost.

This time around, I started with a blank project, added an existing data source, and within a couple minutes I had created a Web page that contained an table bound to a table in the data source. All of this without writing one line of code! Of course, the page didn't respond to any user events or do anything particularly interesting, but it was much quicker than if I had set up a JSP page that did the same thing.

My goal is to spend some time this coming weekend exploring the tool in more depth and writing about my experience. I have not used JSF at all, and I think my background with JSP and Microsoft Visual Basic should provide an interesting reference point. For all it's short comings, Visual Basic was a fantastic tool for creating GUIs and I am anxious to see if Creator can provide that same GUI building experience with the power of Java and J2EE under the hood. I am going to try to stumble through without trying any of the tutorials or without reading the documentation.

• If you are interested in learning more about why you should use JSF and Creator, check out this podcast: Java Posse-episode 29
• If you are interested in why you may consider an alternative framework check out this podcast: Java Posse-episode 28 (Tapestry)

I should mention that The Java Posse (Web site) is a fantastic podcast for anyone interested in Java. They have some great interviews, lots of good news, tons of practical experience, and they really get you psyched about using Java.

And check back next week if you are interested in learning about my experience!